Grass is green, water is wet, and Jonathan Byers does not like Steve Harrington.
These are known facts in the universe.
Computers were going to take over the world, a “mobile” phone was being invented, and Steve Harrington had lost most of his hearing.
These were unknown facts--rumors even, if you will. Eddie had never seen even a grain of truth to support any of them.
(Well, maybe the computer thing, but only because Grant and Dustin both had made a couple of convincing arguments.)
So he doesn’t think about it, when his freshman gang up on him.
Doesn’t even factor the “can’t hear well” thing in, when he was tasked (demanded, whined, bitched and moaned at) with helping them explain to Steve why going to the release party of the new D&D box set, located at a hobby store only a mere 2 hour drive away, was important.
Eddie’s not even sure how the little shits got him to agree to do it until he’s standing in the parking lot in front of the former King himself.
“The store’s leading up to the release with a handful of one-shots.” He’s explaining, unsure whether to pull out the bored act or play up his court jester persona, and thus mixing and matching on the fly.
He does not care if Harrington doesn’t know what a one-shot is.
“They’re releasing the set at midnight. You have to be there to get it though, you can’t have someone else pick it up for you because they only got a certain amount in.”
Harrington’s frowning (no surprise) but it’s not until Eddie is well into his spiel about how his van is already full with the elder members of Hellfire, and thus has no room for the freshmen, that he realizes Steve isn’t quite looking at him.
Is in fact, looking over his shoulder.
Eddie stops. Follows Harrington’s gaze.
Parked across from Steve’s Beemer, is Jonathan Byer’s barely working clunker car.
A handful of steps in front of it, and thus nearly right behind Eddie, is the man himself.
His hands are still moving, mouth shaping words silent as he goes, his gaze locked not on Eddie or the kids--but on Steve.
Who turns back around as Harrington’s eyes slide right back to him.
“And this is taking place next Friday?” He says, in that sort of annoyed but resigned way parents aim at their children. “After school?”
“I’d like to go during school, but the freshmen insist you wouldn’t let them ditch out.” Eddie tells him. “They had two separate arguments about it.”
Loud ones, that had interrupted the game and given Eddie a migraine.
Once again Steve’s eyes slide away from him, to Jonathan.
“They’re not skipping school.” He says suddenly, a glare forming and Jonathan makes an annoyed noise.
“They argued about skipping, they’re not going to.” He says aloud, and finally steps up so that he’s next to Eddie instead of behind him.
“Munson slow down, I can’t sign as fast as you’re talking.” He adds, in the hang-dog grumble he’s notorious for.
Eddie stares at him.
“Can he seriously not hear me?”
“No.” Steve and Jonathan answer together.
“I can kind of still hear,” Steve adds, gaze returning to Eddie’s face. “But its more loud music or noises. I can lip read, but you’re also talking too fast for that.”
Without pausing, he turns back to Jonathan and says; “Why can’t you take them?”
“It’s Friday.” Byers deadpans.
Eddie’s not an expert on sign language, but his hands somehow looked deadpan too.
He’s not sure how Jonathan did that.
“So?” Steve snarks back.
What follows is an argument that Eddie is not, at all involved in, mostly because he’s too busy handling the fact that Jonathan Byers has learned sign language, for Steve Harrington, apparently, and given the tone the argument is taking they still don’t even like each other.
Eventually the argument ends, Steve throwing his hands in the air and demanding that Jonathan owes him.
(Eventually Eddie will corner the ever so quiet Will Byers and ask why the hell his brother learned sign language for someone he clearly fucking hates.
“Oh they don’t hate each other.” Baby Byers would say, in that shy, quiet way of his. “I think they’re actually friends now?”
“You think?”
“Well--you’ve seen them.” Will shrugs. “I think being mean to each other is kinda their thing.”
‘What the hell.’ Eddie would think, right up until he stumbled across one of the kids sign language books.
Byers the Elder, he decides, isn’t the only person who should learn sign language to chew out Harrington properly.
The pay off is immediate.
Or at least, the pay off of watching Steve’s shocked face the first time Eddie signs something vulgar at him is, anyway.)
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“Piper?”
“Here.”
“Damien?”
“Here.”
“Clovis?”
No answer. Nico reaches over and pokes him, hard, and the son of Hypnos startles awake long enough to manage a garbled, “Present!” before nodding off again. At Chiron’s nodded permission, Connor procures an airhorn from what appears to be thin air, grins, and blares it right next to Clovis’ face. He shrieks, flailing off the chair, and would have slammed his face in the ground if Nico hadn’t caught him by the back of the shirt.
“Thanks, man,” he says, yawning.
Nico hauls him back upright, patting him on the shoulder. “No problem. I’m gonna let you fall next time.”
Clovis eyes him warily, shifting at Nico’s too-wide, sharklike grin.
“Noted,” he mutters, sitting straight to try and stay awake. “Jerk.”
Nico pats him on the shoulder again. “There, there.”
Chiron continues with the attendance.
“Butch?”
“Here.”
“Miranda?”
“Yep.”
“And…” Chiron sighs, peering through his reading glasses. “Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one…” He glances down at his clipboard, slowly tapping his pen on the edge of it. “Where is Will?”
A groan ripples through the gathered campers.
“Just start without him!” someone shouts, sinking into their chair.
“He always takes forever!” another person agrees.
“Almost like he’s busy running the infirmary that keeps us all alive,” Lou Ellen says drily, but her one vote of confidence is drowned out by several dozen other voices, all complaining.
Before Chiron has to deal with too much of a coup d’état, the rec room door creaks open, and Will comes strolling in after it, ignoring the heaps of boos and launched ping-pong balls at his tardiness. The beam of sunlight from the one dusty window seems, suddenly, to become a great deal stronger, highlighting the blonde of Will’s hair and strengthening the gleam of his easy grin.
“Perforated artery,” he explains cheerfully, settling down in the one empty chair. “Rogue Ares cabin mine went off. Had to do emergency surgery.”
No sooner are the words out of his mouth does he kick off his flip-flops, curl up in the rickety wooden chair, place his head on the nearest shoulder — Pollux, this time, who rolls his eyes affectionately and shifts to be more comfortable — and immediately starts snoring.
“Well,” says Chiron after a moment. “Let’s begin.”
“Wait,” Clovis complains, “how come he gets to sleep?”
Instead of answering, because there is no delicate way to say because he’s my favourite and I am a giant hypocrite, the centaur moves on. He gracefully avoids the various mutterings and calls for mutiny, instead running through the usual cabin check-ins at the speed of light to delve into the more interesting — and therefore distracting — things, such as Personal Grievances. This portion of monthly head counsellor meetings is Nico’s favourite, because he gets to sit back, be silent, and watch a bunch of teenagers yell at each other for his own personal amusement. On especially great days, he communicates with Connor through a series of complicated hand gestures to coordinate betting pools. Today, he is up seventy-two dollars. (Did he throw the pool by betting against himself and then inventing a fight with Chiara? Yeah. Did he cut her a deal for halfsies beforehand, making this technically fraud on two counts? Yeah. Can anyone prove it? Absolutely not. Suck on that, Stoll. You wanna be beat at your own game any day of the week? Nico’ll beat you at your own game any day of the week.)
As he’s accepting three dollars from a huffy Nysa (obviously the physical altercation count was going to reach six, c’mon, doesn’t she pay attention to these things), a hoof stamping the ground makes Nico jump.
“Boys,” Chiron says tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose, “that’s quite enough.”
Both campers immediately burst into louder arguments, continuing to flail and smack at each other as their voices get more and more raised and illegible.
“Boys!” Chiron stamps his hoof again. This time, they fall silent, staring at the old centaur with flushed, guilty faces. “Sherman, get Malcom out of that headlock. Malcolm, we are not building a pig pen in the dining pavilion so the Ares cabin can ‘eat in an environment more suited to their mannerisms’.” He pauses, nodding in acknowledgement. “As funny as that was, it was entirely inappropriate to say. Apologise at once.”
“My throat is too bruised to do so,” Malcom grumbles.
“My throat is too bruised to do so,” Sherman repeats, mockingly. “Gods, it’s like you’re asking for me to jump you.” At the immediate catcalls and jeers that follow, he reddens, hastily shouting, “Like mug! Jump like mug him, guys, like beat him up! Shut up! Shut up, or I swear I’ll —”
“Sit down, boys,” Chiron says, banging his hoof again. “For Hera’s sake. It’s like you want to embarrass yourselves further.”
Nico snickers with the rest of the counsellors as Sherman and Malcolm return to their seats. In their desperate attempt to separate from each other to assure their status as Heterosexual, Guys, Please, they manage to bump into each other, losing their balance and collapsing on a heap on the floor, more tangled than before. Predictably, this makes the flailing worse, which is unfortunate for them and their misery but a source of great entertainment for everyone else. Among the hooting and hollering and camera flashes, Chiron sighs, putting his head in his hands and muttering something about teenagers and being too old for this shit. Or something.
“If everyone’s quite done,” he says finally, ignoring Connor’s quip about how he could watch a few more minutes, actually, “I would love for this meeting to end. I have to do something that doesn’t involve teenagers for several hours. All of you exhaust me.”
“Except Will,” Sherman says petulantly, scowling at the still-sleeping medic. Pollux, who by close proximity has become endeared to the human disaster (Nico knows the feeling; he’s still convinced Will has weird powers that mess with one’s oxytocin levels by virtue of smiling as there is no way that someone so annoying can be so simultaneously endearing), glares somewhat protectively.
“Sh,” he hisses, at the same time Chiron says, “If the rest of you spent less time trying to kill each other and more time trying to fix the consequences of said attempted murder, I would be more lenient.”
Lou Ellen speaks up. “Also, Will has that whole cute, can’t-stay-mad-at-me thing.”
Various campers nod and mutter in agreement.
(Nico knew he wasn’t the only one.)
Nyssa clears her throat. “If we’re ready to return back to the actual meeting, I have a point of discussion.”
Chiron nods, gesturing for her to continue.
“The vans are breaking down,” she says bluntly. “Again. Because they’re, you know, older than everyone in the room.” She glances at Nico, frowning. “Well, except for him.”
Nico sniffs haughtily. “Youngin’s, these days,” he says, shaking his head disdainfully. “No respect for their elders.”
Chiron raises a bemused eyebrow. “…Indeed. Nyssa?”
“I need parts again. Preferably from that place in Virginia? They don’t ask questions and price fairly. That would be best. Only I need the van to go get the parts, so. You can see the conundrum I’m in.”
“Easy fix with the chariot,” Chiron decides. “Can someone wake Will?”
“Gladly.”
“Without the airhorn, Connor.”
“Aw. I’m not doing it, then.”
“How tragic. Pollux?”
Gently, the son of Dionysus taps Will’s cheek, shaking him until he blinks awake.
“I was totally paying attention and I think we should go with the second option,” he says, yawning.
“Not asking you to settle a debate, but nice try,” Pollux says.
“Well, shit. That one usually works.” He flicks still-tired eyes around the room, smiling when his gaze rests on Nico. Nico rolls his eyes, willing down the heat to his cheeks. Judging by the teasing edge Will’s grin takes, it does not work. “Whattaya need, then?
“The chariot,” Nyssa says. “Vans are breaking down again. I need a part from a shop in Roanoke.”
Will straightens. “Like, now?”
“In the next day or so, yeah.”
“There’s a strawberry delivery on Saturday,” Miranda pipes up. “So sooner rather than later.”
Will nods. “Yeah, that works. Hell, I can probably be back by —” he checks his watch — “late tonight, honestly. Just gimme the part number and —”
“I kind of meant that I could go,” Nyssa interrupts, looking at him strangely. “I know what the part looks like. I just need to borrow the chariot.”
Will presses his clasped hands to his face, inhaling deeply.
“I would absolutely love to lend you the chariot blessed by my father who has gone totally silent,” he begins, in a tone that makes Nico think that he would not, actually, absolutely love to lend out the chariot blessed by his father who has gone totally silent, “only that the last time I lent someone this super important chariot it came back in pieces.”
“I remember.” Nyssa levels him with a look. “I fixed it.”
“Exactly! So you appreciate how much I would like it to not be broken. In fact —”
“Alright,” Chiron interrupts, holding up a hand. “You’ve made your point, Will, the errand is yours. Choose a buddy to lower the chances of you dying and check in before you leave.”
Predictably, this choice is not well-recieved. Because why would things be easy?
“Totally not fair,” Sherman protests, the loudest of all complainers. “Will’s no less likely to break it just because his cabin thinks they own it —”
“Finish that thought and I will curse you in twelve different ways for the next eight months, Sherman.”
The Ares counsellor snaps his mouth shut, sensing the new, hardened edge in Will’s voice. “Noted.”
“He’s got a point, though,” Damien hedges. At Will’s glare — boy, is that chariot a sensitive topic, Nico is noticing — he holds his hands up, shrugging his shoulders. “We draw straws for small errand-quests, Will, you know that. It’s not fair that you just get to call dibs.”
Will takes a long, slow breath, fingers pressed to his temples. When he looks back up, his expression is flatter than the entirety of the Midwest, jaw set and eyebrow raised. He narrows his eyes, contemplating, then clearly comes to a decision, nodding to himself. Everyone watches with bated breath as he climbs up to stand on his chair, folds his hands together, clears his throat, and says, voice carefully controlled, “Who can guess how many surgeries I’ve done in the last week?”
For a long moment it’s so silent that Nico can hear every rustled shirt as people fidget, every aborted cough and uncomfortable swallow. Will’s eyes are piercing, and he takes the time to stare at every individual counsellor until they meet his eyes, squirming, and look immediately away.
Nico’s impressed. Sometimes he forgets how godsdamn rigid Will’s backbone is.
Finally, someone offers a guess.
“One?”
“Try four,” Will corrects, smile more like a bare of teeth. “I have not had a circadian rhythm since I was thirteen years old. I sleep when I can. And yet, somehow, you clumsy fucks manage to near kill yourself at the exact moment my subconscious even considers approaching REM sleep, every single time, and then I get to spend my next several hours piecing your sorry ass back together by hand, since hymns barely work right now. If I have to see another surgical pin I am going to stab it through someone’s eye. Am I making a point?”
No one answers.
“‘Cause I can make it clearer,” Will drawls.
“No need,” Chiron says hastily. “The quest remains yours, so long as there are no further objections.”
Wisely, no one speaks up.
“Perfect. Nyssa, if you’ll stay behind with me to iron out some details, everyone else — dismissed.”
The tense air immediately evaporates as people practically spring out of their seats, sprinting for the door. Nico is among the last to leave, having to stay and stop several fleeing demigods to collect his wares. On his way out, a heavy arm slings over his shoulders, and he’s suddenly enveloped by the intoxicating scent of lavender body wash and pure sunshine.
“Get off me, Solace,” he complains immediately, coming up to wrap his hand around Will’s forearm in the guise of shoving him off. Will is entirely unfazed, holding him tighter.
“But I have a proposal.”
“Take it elsewhere.” He ducks out of Will’s hold and sweeps his legs out from under him, sending him sprawling with an oof. Unfortunately, he doesn’t look any less sunny and smiley from the ground, somehow making it work for him, actually. He settles against the soft grass, sighing, hair fanning out like a golden halo. He pats the spot next to him, eyes fluttering shut as he basks in the late morning sun, and Nico swallows roughly, joining him.
“You wanna come with me to Roanoke?”
“Yes,” Nico says automatically. Will grins, and he flushes. “I mean, I guess if I have to. Loser.”
“Ever so grateful, Neeks.”
“You should be.”
He keeps his voice prim and superior, attempting to uphold his image, and since he is delusional he convinces himself he’s successful. Will, though, is entirely undeterred, lazy smile still on his face and arms stretched above his head, the picture of unbothered. A sliver of skin shows where the hem of his shirt rises and Nico ignores it. He doesn’t even glance at it, or the glint of Will’s belly-button piercing, at all. Nor is he aware of Will’s shorts riding up, or the curve of his calves as he crosses his legs. All of these things go unnoticed. Obviously.
“I have a proposal for you, if you’re done checking me out.”
Nico shoves his flaming face in his knees. “Did you know that in all the corners of the Earth I have been to, I’ve only encountered three things uglier than you?”
Will’s grin only gets wider. His eyes, even, start to get squinty as the force of his smile squishes his cheeks. Entirely unsubtly, because Will is the least subtle person alive, he reaches out and sends a wave of calming energy into Nico’s body, slowing his rapid heart rate.
“…Right.”
“Three things, Solace.”
“Of course, of course.” He removes his hand, graciously allowing Nico the space to breathe and remind his lungs that their job is not voluntary. “I’ll come pick you up in a half hour? Wear a jacket.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Nico pauses. “Yes.”
“Stellar.”
“God, you say such nerdy things unironically. How do you have friends?”
“I dunno.” He gets to his feet, brushing the dirt and grass from his shorts. “You tell me.” He leans down and presses a smacking kiss to Nico’s hair. Nico presses his fingers into his eyeballs until they hurt, screaming silently into his palms.
He waits until the smacking sounds of Will’s stupid flip-flops retreat before braving the world outside his little ball of misery, squinting at his retreating form.
“I think I should get a lobotomy,” he says out loud to himself, because, realistically, if his braincells are already spilling out of his ears like loose quarters every time Solace so much as smiles at him then there’s not much to lose, is there? and stomps off to his own cabin.
Out of spite, he chooses the New York Giants jacket he got from Percy, just because he knows Will hates it.
That’ll show him who’s bossing who around.
Totally.
———
next
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i. note — i have so many thoughts about akademiya era dottore. most of them are silly and fun and cute i promise but some of them are..... Nothing like that. help me i need to Ruin Him. ong when i get my hands on him………
ii. includes — akademiya!dottore (zandik), gn reader
iii. cw — i'm literally just rambling so have fun. he's kindof a brat, reader is implied to have more experience. making out, dry humping, outercourse. smut so mdni. no penetration
akademiya!zandik whose social circle is practically nonexistent; if he’s not tinkering with machine parts he found in some abandoned ruin then he’s nose deep into an old book, trying to absorb knowledge directly through the pages. so, of course it’s not a surprise when he doesn’t know how to act normal around people
akademiya!zandik who would be so pent up and so so so sooooo sensitive! he wouldn’t even get himself off ever, choosing to soothe his curiosity about khaenrian machines over his own carnal, lustful needs. even something as simple as a hug gets his blood rushing straight down (much to his frustration!! he's supposed to be a scholar, not some hormonal beast..........)
it would be so easy to rile him up.. be a little too touchy and “oblivious” to how your “platonic” affection gets to him and BAM now he can’t focus on what he’s doing because his heartbeat is just throbbing in his crotch. he’ll read the same line five times before he realizes that nothing is getting through his head (and instead something else is getting in his other head…….)
akademiya!zandik who would most definitely be a whiner. when you finally get him to pay attention to you he’s all mad n whatever, weakly scolding you for even daring to interrupt his studies. but as he swivels his chair around to face you, he sees you standing over him, looking down at his cute scowl, n he feels his cock jump at the sight. you looked almost angelic, the overhead lighting creating a makeshift halo around your head…
zandik who interrupts his own rambling just to look at you. or, uh, to gawk at you. while you peer down at the….. effect you have on him
you step forward and raise your leg to place your knee between his thighs on his chair, and bend down to get closer to his face. his breath hitches and he swallows thickly all while holding your gaze— at this point he might as well have hearts in his eyes. but he’s still scowling n his brows are all furrowed…. wonder when and how he’ll finally lose that tension in his face. hmmmm……..
even just a kiss on the cheek would fluster him, because of course it would! but what about a kiss on the lips? what about a messy french kiss, filled with tongue and teeth clashing clumsily as you absolutely devour him while all he can do is moan into your mouth and shut his eyes to prevent them from rolling back into his skull?
poor baby would be struggling to breathe, fingers tangling themselves into your uniform in a poor attempt to let you know he wants to tap out. you get what he’s trying to do, of course, but why not push him to his limits? tease him a little? his muffled moans feel like music to your ears and you want to hear the entire symphony
but when you finally pull away, a lewd string of saliva connecting your tongues, poor zandik can’t help the moan that leaves his bruised lips. he pulls you in again, chest heaving up and down to catch his breath, n tries to go for another kiss. you let him pull you in but you don’t return the kiss, instead choosing to keep your lips shut tightly as he whines and huffs out elaborate curses to try to make you indulge him
and indulge him you will when he learns how to beg for what he wants. to your surprise he learns fairly quickly— even if he’s a little bad at it. but it’s charming!! “just fucking kiss me again goddamnit”, “i wanna kiss you again. let me kiss you”, and your favourite, “p… please?”
it's right then that you make it your life’s mission, your purpose to make him stutter like that every single day.
and it’s almost cathartic when you touch him, even if your clothes are still in the way. still balancing yourself on the chair (and also pinning him to it in turn, hehe) you bump your knee against his erection, a breathy moan blessing your ears from zandik himself. his grip on your top is so tight you think he might even rip it, god knows the last time he trimmed his nails
zandik who would grind himself on your knee without even realizing what he’s doing, all the while you coo in his ears about what a good job he’s doing, what a good boy he is.
zandik who would yearn for more, who would weakly cuss you out when you refuse to let him fuck you.
zandik who, even with his enormous ego, would still follow you around like a lost puppy, begging you to teach him everything you know
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